


Tumblr Prompts

by Ghelik



Series: The 100 Fics [54]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-06-22 23:51:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15593562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghelik/pseuds/Ghelik
Summary: One-shot Tumblr Prompts





	1. Go on, cry - Zaven

**Author's Note:**

> This deals with death, grief, and PTSD.
> 
> For @llysandra, who prompted zaven and "go on cry"

Raven drags the heavy box across her makeshift workshop towards the workbench.  
Six months, that’s how long the war for Eden lasted. Six weeks, that's how long it's been since the side she's on won. Six. 

There seems to be something about the number six; it keeps haunting her: She was with Finn for six years before he cheated. Six years in space before she felt the ground under her boots once again. Six months of war. Six weeks since the cease-fire.

Her brace clacks and gets stuck, making her unable to bend or extend the leg. Raven curses in trig and sits on top of the box to unclasp it.

Everything seems to be malfunctioning.

It’s like the Ring all over again: too much to do, too few resources. Only this time it’s ~~worse~~ better because she doesn’t have as many distractions.

She can throw herself into her work without pesky useless people barging in and out of her room.

The little cog that got loose on her brace snaps back into place. Raven reattaches it to her leg and works it a few times to make sure it’ll hold. She’ll have to fix it more permanently in the future, but for the time being, this will have to do.

The mechanic stands back up and drags the heavy box all the way to her workbench. Someone knocks on the door, but she ignores it.

There is too much to do, too much to fix. Somewhere in the distance someone screams, something explodes.  
She pulls the fried circuits out of the small engine and proceeds to weld the new components into place. It’s a slow-going, complicated task, what with the repurposed pieces and insufficient materials, but she makes due. ' _Concentration_ ,' that’s what Sinclair always said. ' _If you can concentrate, you can do anything_.' The pieces are too small and her head blocks the overhead lights. “Emori, I need that flashlight over here!”

The light doesn’t come, and Raven snaps her head up with a frustrated growl. “If you are not going to help, you can as well-“ The workshop is empty. “Leave-”

Raven looks around her makeshift workshop.  
It’s empty.

It’s always empty.

Someone in the distance screams.

The mechanic huffs at the inconvenience of being deprived of her assistant but snatches the small side-lamp she has been given and puts it into place. She picks up her tools and continues working.

The light must be too intense, because when she blinks, all she can see is a ball of fire. The little tools in her hands are blurry.

The mechanic blinks. Her eyes itch.

Someone knocks on the door.

It’s Murphy, here to pester her with some useless little story. Or maybe it’s Bellamy, with his sad face and a book under his arm, seeking some quiet company.

“Go away, I am working!”

It might be Echo, here to fetch her for their sparring lessons, but Raven doesn’t feel like sparring. Her knee throbs and the collar around her throat feels tighter than usual.

The door opens.

Not Echo then. Maybe Monty or Harper, here to fetch her for dinner– everyone knows Raven forgets to check the time when she’s working.

Raven sighs - she cannot be mean to Harper – and turns.

It’s not Harper, and Raven feels a flare of anger burning through her veins.

In the back of her mind, someone screams, fire rages. Murphy would've loved that ball of fire, the trill of destruction.

"What do you want?”

The irregular steps, the slight clang of his peg leg echoes in the room when Zeke comes closer.

“It’s three a.m., Raven. Come to bed.”

“I haven’t finished here yet.” She turns, tools ready. The engine in front of her looks as broken as it was half an hour, three hours ago. She checks the new patch, the circuits should work, but they feel off.

“You can finish in the morning.”

The collar's too tight.

She wishes it were Monty, instead of Zeke. Monty would’ve been able to help her figure out what’s wrong with the engine.

“Go away.”

“No.”

Zeke snatches the tools out of her hands putting them away on top of a shelf he knows she cannot reach.

For a moment Raven sits on her chair, looking flabbergasted at her empty hands. Then pure wrath sets in. She launches herself at him, and Zeke might be taller than her, he might be stronger, might have boxed back in his time. But Raven learned to fight from Echo kom motherfucking Spacekru, and he doesn’t stand a chance.

Someone wails.

They’re on the floor: her straddling his chest awkwardly – her brace won’t bend all the way, and the small cog digs painfully into the side of her knee – him holding her wrist in a big hand. She twists, trying to get loose.

“I HATE YOU!” When she blinks she sees the ball of fire burned into the inside of her eyelids. Hears the distant screams. “YOU DID THIS!”

“I am sorry, Raven,” he says, like he can make this all better. “But I didn’t.”

The mechanic growls, she snaps her teeth at him. ' _When everything else fails, you still have teeth_ ,' Echo used to say. ' _It’s not elegant, by any means, but neither is getting killed_.'

Zeke doesn’t let her go; he pulls her arms to the side so that she’s laying sidewise on his chest – her shoulder digging into his sternum – and embraces her, pressing her so hard against his chest, he might snap her in two, or keep all the pieces from falling apart.

The mechanic fights to get free, but can’t. “It’s Ok, Rae.”

Stupid, useless tears prick at the corners of her eyes. But they don't fall.

"It is ok, Raven.”

She’s clawing at his arm, pulling him tighter against herself. “I hate you!”

“I know.”

Zeke inhales. She can feel it under her ear: his heart hammering against his ribs, air flowing down, his chest expanding, so utterly alive.

“It’s ok, Raven.”

When she closes her eyes, she can see it: her hand steady on the joystick, her finger on the release button. On the monitors is Octavia's army, Maddi at its head, Echo and Bellamy right behind her. Ready to protect and fight. She can hear McCreary’s raspy voice, feel his breath on her ear. “Fire.” The hum of the shock collar a promise around her throat.

“Come on. We'll do it together.”

She can still feel his calloused hand over hers. Can still see the scars crisscrossing the back of it, the little hairs and the broken skin on his knuckles. She sees the missile flying, hears McCreary’s men’s whoop and cackling laughter. “You actually did it.” She feels the eyes of the madman staring at her. Can feel the tears prickling in her eyes. McCreary doesn’t laugh. She cannot look away from the fiery inferno. Cannot tear her eyes from the people in flames, the people torn to pieces. Her whole family was down there. And she looked down at them and fired anyway. All for what? To save Zeke? Herself?

“It looks like you do belong with us,” purrs McCreary in her ear. “You are as much a killer as I am.” Raven tears her eyes from the massacre.

“I am nothing like you!”

McCreary smirks. “You can tell yourself that if it makes you feel better. But at the end of the day,” he turns her head towards the monitor once again, “you are as selfish as the rest of us. You feel as little remorse for your actions as we do” He pets the top of her head. “If I am wrong, go on, cry.”

She can’t.  
Not when staring at the massacre.  
She can’t.  
Not when she lands the beautiful hovercraft.  
She can’t.  
Not when they give her a workshop  
She can’t  
Not when Zeke takes her in his arms.  
She can’t.  
Not when she’s working on the uptenth project.  
She can’t.  
Not when she’s laying in Zeke’s arms on the floor of her workshop.

There is something special about the number six: six years is how long she was with Finn before he fell in love with someone else. Six months until Praimfaya. Six years she spent in space. Six months is how long the war for Eden took. Six weeks since the end of the war. Six people belonged to her family.


	2. Memori - "hey, I’ve got you. It’s okay. " and "Can I hug you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for @daisytachi for the prompt ^^

“ _Hey, Bellamy. Hey, Clarke. We wanted him to wake you first so we could talk._ ” The whole ship is eerily quiet, and the voice reverberates in the empty halls. “ _Earth isn’t coming back. You’ve been asleep for over 28 years, and it’s as dead as the day we left._ ”

Emori sighs, leaning on the doorframe to the bridge. It’s dark, only one screen still on, a figure hunched on a stool in front of it, legs pressed up against chest, arms around shins. She can see his messy hair highlighted by the screen in front of him.

“ _I’m working on a plan B, though. If you’re awake, that means I found it. I’ll see you again when I do._ ”

“ _Wait_ ,” says Harper through the speakers and Emori’s heart breaks a little. When she closes her eyes, she can see her: older than she ever knew her, “ _Not yet. Take care of our boy._ ”

There’s a pause.

“ _Jordan, your mother died today. She was pretty sick the last few years._ ” The man in front of the screen sniffs, shoulders shaking. “ _Clarke, you were right. Her dad’s genetic condition finally got her. We had a good life. Sometimes I know she wanted to be with you guys. Maybe I did, too._ ”

“Then why didn’t you?” spits Murphy, voice cracked and angry, and Emori has to brush the tears from her cheeks. “ _But if we did that, I wouldn’t be able to show you this._ ”

“It took you 30 fucking years,” growls Murphy, even as the recording continues. “Raven could’ve done it in 5. And then you wouldn’t have had to die, you selfish bastard, and she wouldn’t have to act all tough and unaffected.”

Emori feels a small, sad smile tugging at her lips.

“ _I’m tempted to put myself in cryo to see it, but without Harp_ -”

Murphy slams his hand on the controls, freezing the frame. The sound is unnaturally loud in the quiet ship “How could you? You took Em’s best friend away. You were supposed to be the selfless one. You were supposed to be the good one. Why? Why would you just leave-?”

He sniffs, brushes his nose with the back of a hand in that boyish way he has, and Emori knows he’s steeling himself, wrapping his hurt in anger in a way he did so often during their time on the Ring. It’s a painful process to watch. “Well let me tell you because everyone else will say you were _oh so brave! And oh, so good! You found the solution and the double-sun planet. Yay, Monty!_ But you took the cowards way out, and in doing so, you’ve hurt Bellamy, and Raven and Emori and Echo.” And me he doesn’t add, because gods forbid he ever let his hurt show. “You. Are. A. Selfish. Coward! And I-!”

Emori sighs and knocks on the doorframe. Murphy jumps, startled like a cat and turns to look at her, nearly falling off his stool in the process. He looks wary, brushes his cheeks with the backs of his hands to erase the tears.

“Ems.” His voice is low now, ashamed. “I thought you were sleeping.”

Emori takes a step closer to him, and he backs away. It looks nearly natural, the movement. Like he’s offering her his seat instead of running away.

Things aren’t like they used to be. Since they woke from cryo two weeks ago, they’ve been dancing around each other. Emori know that, if things stay calm, Murphy’ll slip right back into his self-destructive nature, will tear everything apart before it can hurt him, and she is not ready to go through that again. Will not go through that again, no matter how much she loves him.

But that means they’ve been keeping their distance and, apparently, Murphy has been torturing himself with the recordings. “I couldn’t sleep,” she says taking another step closer. On the screen behind Murphy, Monty looks at the camera with his long white hair and old and tired eyes.

Murphy’s backed himself against the console, trapped by a chair to his left. A cornered Murphy is a dangerous and vulnerable creature, Emori knows. “What are you doing here?”

“Nothing.”

Emori arches an eyebrow, her hip is by the console now, and he’s practically sitting on top of the console. She looks at the frozen frame. “I miss them, too, you know?”

“They can rot in hell for all I care.”

She sighs. “I don’t think they intended to hurt us, John.” He looks skeptical, but he doesn’t interrupt her. “They thought we would wake up in ten years. And when they saw that the earth wasn’t coming back, they spared us the long wait. And found us a safe place to live.”

“If that was the plan, why didn’t they say so? Why let us believe they were safe, when…?” His voice breaks.

“What difference would’ve made?”

“We would’ve been prepared.”

“No. We would’ve been prepared to seeing them ten years older. Not dead.

“We would’ve known! We would’ve known they wanted to leave. Instead, they did it behind our backs and-“ He’s panting, fighting to get himself back under control and failing. Fighting the tears and the pain, trying to keep his cloak of anger about him. And failing.

Emori takes another small step towards him; he doesn’t even notice. “John? John, can I hug you?”

He shudders, his head hanging lower, hears bright red with embarrassment. His nod is a barely-there movement. When she puts her arms around him, he shivers, tensing and then collapsing into her like a puppet with broken strings. His shoulders shake hard “It’s ok,” she whispers into the curve where his throat meets his shoulder. “I’ve got you, John. It’s ok.”

The sob is ugly, wrenched from somewhere deep inside him. Emori sniffs, looks up to keep the tears at bay while John clutches her in his arms like he fears she’ll disappear.

She cards her fingers through his hair and lets him cry for their missing friends. And, when both their tears have run out, she continues to hold him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting :D


	3. The air ran out - Becho

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A race against the clock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr Prompt in which I got the title of the story and had to create something around it.  
> This one was hard to complete, I have started three different stories for it, finished only this one.  
> For Erin, who managed to talk me out of one of one of those and who wanted something fluffy.

The world was on fire: a giant tidal wave of destruction and inescapable doom and just seven puny humans in a tin can, racing against the clock. The ship took off with a loud BANG! Climbing higher and higher into the sky.

 _Surely_ , I thought, _we will touch the ceiling, we will crash against the roof that keeps everything on the planet._

The whole ship shook and groaned, thrusters screaming and metal complaining. And then… silence. We escaped Earth and were floating in the Void beyond the sun’s light, suspended in eternal darkness.

The Ring appeared on the screen before we could see it through the windows: a metal palace that defied all logic. An offense against the Spirits; ominous and foreboding and… dark.

“She’ll get it done,” grumbled Bellamy fiercely. Maybe if he believed it enough, it would become true.

For minutes we hung in silence, surrounded by absolute nothingness. Any minute the lights would go on, the Ring coming back to life and saving us all.

Raven climbed out of the ship and into the Void beyond, swimming in an endless ocean of nothingness, just a frail human-made suit between her and certain death.

The rest of us could only sit in silence, watching the numbers on our air-tanks trickle down. Every breath we took a step closer to death.

Any minute now.

The lights remained stubbornly off, and on the oxygen tanks, the needle climbed steadily down. Down. Down. 18%, 17%...

And suddenly…

Yes! The Ring lighted up like a bonfire, and the door swished open. But we were not safe yet. The ship has docked on the Ring, but it still needed air.

So we dragged our massive machine through foreboding corridors and to the room where it had to go.

5%.

Bellamy opened a wall, tearing it out to reveal the wires and tubes and switches we needed.

4%

Murphy, Raven, and Emori were sharing their limited oxygen. Lying on the floor since they weren’t strong enough to stand. Connecting the wires was a slow going affair, and Bellamy needed Monty to walk him through the process Monty fell.

3%

Beside me Harper was choking on nothing, fighting for air.

2%.

I could barely keep my eyes open, my lungs threatening to explode, screaming for air. Harper lost consciousness.

1%

The last thing I saw was Bellamy switching the machine on.

It was too late. The air ran out.

 

There’s a general gasp and Echo smiles at her audience, three pairs of eyes fixed on her, bodies completely immobile, heads leaning forward waiting expectantly.

Bellamy smiles at the sight of them: the twins with their wild dark curls and beautifully freckled eyes, and the baby girl, with her chubby little arms and blond pigtails.

“Or so it seemed,” continues Echo. “But the Spirits had decided our fight wasn’t over yet and so- shh! Do you hear that? Faint as a whisper, not a sound really but the illusion of one. Quiet as a cat’s footfall, the sigh of a ghost. What could it be?”

“Air!” shouts Gus much to his brother’s annoyance.

“Yes! Air, precious air was flowing through the Ring! Tearing us from the gates of Death. Life, smiling upon us for the third time that day.”

“Is your mom forgetting the part where she saves my life again?”

The children turn to him with bright smiles towards him. “Papa!”

He picks little Amanda up and hugs Gus and Ron.

“Would you mind not hijacking my stories?” grumbles Echo, when he bends over to peck her on the lips.

“Not until you tell them right. He sits down beside her. “So, who wants to know what really happened that day?”

Echo huffs, with faked annoyance as she snuggles against his side. Gus and Ron rush back to their beds, throwing the blankets over their legs and nearly bouncing with excitement at the prospect of two stories.

Bellamy weaves the images in front of their eyes, picking up where Echo left off he tells them about their time on the Ring, about Earth and the war and Eligius, all the while feeling Amanda’s heart beat against his chest and Echo’s breath on his arm.

It’s a long story, full of loss and sadness, but it’s his favorite one because it’s the one that brought him here.

 


	4. Voices in the void (BECHO)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy recieves a late-night radio call from Echo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not from Tumblr, and not technically an ask, but Erin, TyrellRose and Sophy were talking about this last night, so it's the first thing I read today... Here you go.

The radio crackles to life "Bellamy? Bellamy, do you read me?"

Echo’s voice is faint and covered in static, his heart leaps into his throat, a million and one possibilities as of why the warrior is breaking radio silence flitting through his mind. “Echo? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She sounds weird. Slightly out of breath. “Just- Are you busy?”

“No. Can’t sleep. It’s difficult sleeping on my own again, “his lips twist into a sheepish smile. “Are you alright?”

For a moment only the crackle of static answers him. Then Echo says, her voice slightly less huffy: “I had a dream that I would never see you again.”

“Well, that was a nightmare. Because it is never happening.”

“What we are doing, it’s dangerous. A lot of things can go wrong.”

“Echo, darling, the gods themselves couldn’t keep me from you. We will always find each other. If I have to go down through Tartarus itself to get to you.”

She gives a breathless laugh. “Gods wouldn’t taunt such a devotion.”

“You can laugh all you want, but that doesn’t make it less true.”

“You are so sweet.” She sighs. “I sometimes wonder what happens after we take the valley. We aren’t part of Wonkru. We-“

“We settle. Octavia has agreed to give us a plot of land big enough for all of us. We’ll farm, and build houses. Real houses like those in your aunt’s village. We’ll have a garden full of flowers.”

“You don’t know anything about flowers.”

“I’ll learn.”

“We can raise messenger crows like we had in Azgeda?”

“Yeah, why not?”

Pause, the crackling of static sounds like a groan, Echo’s voice is faint when she mumbles: “I am sorry that I can’t give you any children.”

"Well, I am not. You are and always will be more than enough for me.”

She hums. The sound crackles through the radio speaker. “I am falling asleep. Will you tell me more about this future of ours?”

“Echo, is everything alright?”

“Yes, my love. I am silly. But your voice keeps my nightmares at bay.”

“Ok. Are you comfy?”

"Yes." He hears her shifting. "Bellamy? Just… You remember that I love you, ok?"

He smiles, can nearly see her, curled up against him, caramel eyes droopy with sleep, her hand splayed on his chest. He would kiss her brow, his left arm curling more tightly against her back.

He feels empty without her in his arms.

"Well- we'll have a plot of land and a few cabins. You will teach us how to build them because we are stupid skaikru rejects and wouldn’t know a doorframe from a support beam.” She chuckles like he knew she would. “Of course you don’t really know anything about building houses either. So the first attempts will all be crooked and not all that watertight.

But we will get better at it. And at some point, we will have perfected it: a circle of cabins around a central square. We will have storage units and maybe a barn with animals. Perhaps we'll find a horse, and you'll finally get to teach me to ride. I really hope not, because those things are scary as fuck." He can barely hear her chuckle. "We'll be far away from Wonkru that we can remain independent. But close enough to trade with them. Raven will get requests from Wonkru and will work in a mechanic shop with windows on the east and west so she can have light all day. Maybe we'll learn to do a skylight at some point. Skylights would be cool, we can look up at the sky and see all the stars. We will celebrate spring around a Maypole, and we will have a shrine for Emori’s Wind and Crossroad's Spirits. We will light a bonfire and drink Monty's moonshine, which is way better than his algae-beer. He will learn to make wine, at some point. I hear that stuff is delicious.

I wager Murphy and Emori will get back together. Now that he isn't cooped up inside all the time he will be better. He'll be able to run and play his tricks, he'll have his fire, and he’ll have us. And we will be able to make him that we value him, that we love him no matter what. And Emori will thrive; she’ll build crazy stuff, and set one of the houses in fire more than once. At some point, they will have a kid. Or two. It will be chaos. Can you imagine Emori and Murphy’s kid? It will be a spitfire, another of your foxes to trick and outsmart us all.

Monty and Harper will have a few kids. I can see that. And they will be all soft and kind. One of them, they will call Jasper, and he will be cocky and honest. They will wear their heart in their sleeves and get tricked all the time by Emori and Murphy’s spawn.

Raven will find someone that loves her as she deserves. And she will smile that blinding smile of hers.

Octavia will come around sometimes. It will be awkward at first, but she will get better. And, maybe someday, we will be a family again. Perhaps she will stop hating me and blaming me for all of her sorrow." He sighs. From the loudspeaker comes only silence. He wishes the connection would be good enough to hear Echo's light snoring. "There will be times when we fight, and then there will be cold ass winters, and we will think the world is ending in a blizzard. But those times won't matter, because we will be fine, we will survive them.

There will be no need for you to spy or sacrifice yourself, you will put your sword and bow down forever. We will hang them over our bed. And you will sit the kids around the table and tell them about Azgeda, and about Roan and the blue hills. We will look back on our bad memories, and we will find they don't hurt that much anymore. Not compared with the good. And just to scare the little ones, you will paint gruesome images of war and monsters that will horrify Monty and Harper's kids but will fascinate Emori and Murphy’s. And we will tell them those stories of loss and pain, knowing that is the only way they will ever experience it. Knowing they will be safe and cared for and loved.”

He swallows. Echo doesn't answer, and he smiles. "Sweet dreams, my love. We'll see each other really soon."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ending is completely open to interpretation.  
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting.


	5. Bookworms (BECHO)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not tumbler, but a discord prompt:   
> "Echo doesn't know how to read English.  
> >.> Someone must teach her. Not just to see certain words and associate them with what they mean, like Raven would teach her  
> But like, leaning into his chest between his bent knees and reading.  
> And them him taking over and her falling asleep between his arms."  
> Thank you, Sophie

Murphy looks down at the list Raven handed him if it can be called a list. It looks more like a spider wandered in some ink and then decided to do a crazy dance all over the strip of paper. Is this some sort of prank? Is Raven pranking him? Maybe it’s code. Or scienc-y stuff, but he has never seen anything like this before.

“John, what’s on the list?” asks Emori. She’s crouching amidst the large crates of supplies they found in the storage unit. Too crowded for him to properly enter the room, but with enough space for Ems to slither between the containers and peak inside them.

“I have no clue.”

The woman’s stare is unimpressed at best. “I thought you said you could read.”

“I can read. But not whatever language this is.” Emori sighs and squeezes her way out of the storage room. She can’t read, so she doesn’t even try looking at the list. “OK, let’s see if Raven can translate it for you.”

Murphy feels a surge of shame as he follows Emori down the hall. He has already proven he can’t help Raven or Monty with techy stuff, not like Harper, Bellamy and Emori can. Echo has the excuse of being traumatized by the mountain, but he is just useless. One would think he’d be smart enough to read a fucking list of materials.

One would be wrong, apparently.

“Raven! Murphy can’t read your list.”

The mechanic groans, pushing herself out from inside a panel in the wall. “Really? Come on; I didn’t use any technical names.”

“I don’t know what this is, but it’s not English. And I told you I don’t get your fancy coding and scienc-y languages,” growls Murphy, feeling his ears burning.

“I told Echo to write the list;” the mechanic is climbing to her feet with Emori’s help. “So it’s in English.”

“It’s not”

Raven rolls her eyes and snatches the paper from his hands with a tired: "She said her penmanship was a little rusty, but I don't think-" The mechanic stares at the collection of small dots. Blinks. And stares some more, finally rolling her eyes. "Ha-ha, very funny, Murphy."

“I swear to god; this is the paper Echo gave me.”

Emori looks between the two of them. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“This isn’t English,” declares Raven. It’s not like Murphy has been saying this all along, but he bites his tongue and follows the two women when they set up to find Echo. She's with Bellamy, Harper, and Monty, setting up the algae farm and doing most of the heavy lifting while Monty orders Bellamy and Harper around to install scrubbers and water filtration systems. The young man’s hands haven’t healed properly yet, so he can’t do any of the manual labor himself.

“Yo, Echo! I thought you said you could write”, is probably not what Murphy should have said upon entering their future hydro farm. The scary Az-woman rises to her full height, squaring her shoulders. “I do.”

“The hell is this, then?”

She checks the paper. “Well, Raven said you write ‘Ionic disruptor’ as it sounds.”

Bellamy wanders over, peeking over Murphy’s shoulder to take a look at the paper. “What language is this?”

“Since only gonaleng can be written down…”

“You mean to tell us; this is English?”

The warrior frowns at them, her hackles rising. “I am not an analphabet; I was trained as a high commander of Haiplana’s Royal High Guard. I deciphered the dispatches during the Three Year War against the Plain Riders. My penmanship might not be as sophisticated as a Lady's, but I can write."

And with that, she turns on her heel and marches out of the room.

 

***

 

Bellamy looks at the small dots on the paper. He has been staring at them for so long now; he's starting to see shapes between them. With a sigh, he stands up and goes in search of their resident spy.

The last few weeks have been stressful for everyone, and he has been trying to be there for all of his friends. He hasn't paid the warrior much mind, mainly because looking at her still reminds him of the conclave and her shooting at his sister. (It also reminds him of Echo, crying and ready to take her own life _I betrayed you!_ But that’s something he doesn’t want to poke with a ten feet pole.)

Still, it's evident that he needs to speak to her if only to clear the mystery of her writing in dots.

He finds Echo beating the crap out of a punching bag. She has taken off the ridiculous amount of layers she likes to wear and is currently dressed in a thin shirt and leggings. Her face is twisted into an angry snarl.

For a second, Bellamy considers leaving her be. Then he knocks on the door.

“Bellamy,” in the blink of an eye her face is clean of emotion, her back straight and her hands loose at her sides. If he hadn’t seen it, Bellamy would never have guessed she was upset. “Echo, we need to talk about this.”

The warrior presses her lips into a fine line but says nothing. "I did not lie. I can write.” He opens his mouth to say something, but he finds himself at a loss, and Echo all but growls. “I am not some stupid trikru farmer. I know my letters.”

“Where did you learn this?”

“I was taught by the best teachers Azgeda could provide. They taught the Peterson grammar as he envisioned during the Long Winter. But I saw a similar written system on the elevator of the mountain. So, it’s obvious it is gonasleng.”

Bellamy looks down at the array of dots. Braille. It’s written in braille. “This Peterson wouldn’t be blind by any chance?”

Her face twists in anger. “Peterson was one of the greatest Az poets, a great scholar, and pen-wielder."

“Could he have been all that _and_ blind?”

“Trikru lies. He was a great man, not some crippling stone around his family’s throat.”

Bellamy blinks. _That_ was not the reaction he was expecting, but at least now he understands what they’re dealing with. “We can’t read this. We use another system.”

Echo presses her lips into a fine line, but her voice gives nothing away when she says: “Then I will learn.”

 

***

 

Murphy isn’t sure why he’s here. He doesn’t want to be. He doesn’t owe this woman anything. She’s just some Az warrior he’ll be stuck with for six years. _Bet she was friends with Ontari_ , whispers a nasty voice in the back of his mind.

“Why are you always twitchy around me?”

The warrior is very slender, as tall as he is only she carries herself with a ramrod straight back and so much confidence, she looks ten times larger. Murphy saw her flipping Bellamy on his back with one hand. And Bellamy is the best fighter he knows (after Octavia, probably, but it’s not like he’s ever seen Octavia fighting, so it’s all hearsay anyway).

“I am not twitchy.”

“You are the false flame keeper.” Murphy does not shudder, but it’s a close call. “You tricked Ontari and brought her low.” He does not answer. “The guards told me about it. I commend you. Many have tried to humiliate her. Most did not survive.”

“Look, I am only here to ask if you want help learning to read our language.”

She seems to grow a few inches, her face turning to stone. “I am quite capable.”

“Yeah, you might not want to start the manual to a rocket booster.”

She stares at him for a full minute and then: “With what do you suggest I start then?”

Murphy is definitely weirded out by now, but everyone is busy, and he's bored out of his skull. What better to fight off boredom than forcing yourself to share a space with a terrifying warrior?

He shows her what he found. It’s an ancient children’s ABC book covered in pictures of cute animals. The spy takes it with a frown. “What is this?”

“I figure you should maybe start with our alphabet. See? Ant starts with an A. That’s how we write A. Bear is for B. Crocodile for C.”

“I get the idea,” she says slowly. “This is how you teach your young? With pictures of deformed animals?”

“They’re not deformed.”

She flips the book. “This is a creature of hell.”

Murphy chuckles. “That’s an octopus. He’s kinda cute. He’s waving hello.”

Echo looks down at the book, flipping carefully through the pages. "Thank you, John Murphy. Your offer is most kind, and I am in your debt."

“Nah. Just don’t slit my throat while I am sleeping and we’ll be cool.”

“Unless my king tells me otherwise, your throat shall remain un-slit.”

“Did you just crack a joke?”

Echo smirks, a small twitch of her full lips and Murphy finds himself relaxing slightly. "The offer still stands," he pushes his hands into his pockets, "I can help you if you want."

The spy shrugs, distinctly uncomfortable with the prospect. "Ok, don't worry. I'll leave you to it."

“John Murphy,” she calls when he’s at the door. “If you were to find more books like this, to learn my alphabet.”

“I’ll bring them to you.”

“That is most kind, John Murphy.”

“Please, call me Murphy.”

 

***

 

“Damn you to the Void and beyond!”

Bellamy ducks just in time to avoid getting hit in the face by a flying book. The hardcover picture book slams against the wall and flutters sadly to the ground. He stares at it for a second.

It's three in the morning, and the only reason why he isn't in bed is that he's tired of tossing and turning and decided to sit in Earth Monitoring, see if he can reach the bunker. After nearly a year in space, he knows it's futile, but maybe Raven's calculations are wrong (doubtful), and the bunker’s com-system can reach them.

Bellamy picks the book up, flattening the pages that have been wrinkled in the fall.

The door it flew out through is open and inside Echo paces angrily muttering in trig.

“You ok in there?”

Echo stops pacing as soon as she hears him, turning so quickly her braid slaps her in the face.

“Everything is in order.”

“I think this one tried to flee?”

"He was banished," she deadpans, and Bellamy fins himself chuckling.

“To the Void and beyond?”

Other than the blush high on her proud cheekbones, Echo’s face gives away nothing. After so long, though, Bellamy is getting better at reading her.

“What’s the matter?”

“I was practicing my letters. The book did not collaborate. I will get back to it.”

“Do you want me to help?”

“I am quite capable of learning on my own.” She licks her full lips. “How come you aren’t sleeping? It is late.”

“I can’t sleep. Was going to Earth Monitoring, see if I could bore me to sleep.” There is a pause in which both look at each other out of the corner of their eyes. “I really want to help.”

“All right.”

***

 

How long do you need to repeat something until it becomes a routine?

The seventh night Bellamy knocks on her door late at night while she tries to get through another page of her book, she doesn’t even get up from her bed.

After a fortnight, Echo expects him to appear sometime between three and four in the morning, the time when the world contains its breath when light and shadows and ranks get blurred.

Bellamy sits beside her on her bed because there isn’t enough room for a second chair at her metal desk and together they fight their way through the page.

It’s quicker with Bellamy giving her clues, correcting her when she reads out loud. She enjoys reading out loud; it makes it easier to understand what the long lines say. Bellamy never complains about the way she stumbles and stutters on the longer words. Her teachers were never as patient. She would have gotten more than one beating for her slow progress.

After reading, some nights they talk: he tells her about his mother, his sister, the Ark, and the Dropship. Bellamy is a masterful storyteller, spinning his words with the artfulness of a bard.

She usually listens, her storytelling skills aren’t as good. But he asks and seems genuinely interested. So she tells him what little she remembers from her aunt's cottage, tells him about Spymaster Murray and Nia’s court.

And, at some point, she starts talking about the present: Emori’s jokes and Harper’s plans for an improved card game.

Somehow two years in space are over, and Bellamy falls asleep with his head on her shoulder more nights than not. He starts coming over earlier, knocking sheepishly after dinner. “Your bed is comfier than mine.”

And how can she send him away?

They curl up on the bed together with her book resting on their knees. It is about a kid that needs to stick his fingers in a wall to prevent the sea from destroying his town.

"I wasn't supposed to end up in the cages," Bellamy says softly. It is the first time either of them has brought up the Mountain and Echo has to fight the urge to flee. She doesn't get Warrior's Freeze in the face of technology anymore, but she still can't bring herself to enter the med bay.

“I don’t think anybody was supposed to end up there.”

“No, I mean, the plan was to rush the mountain men at the entrance and slip inside to free my people.”

Echo frowns. “How did you end up there?”

“Lincoln betrayed me. He was supposed to help me, but- I guess the drug was too powerful.” She traces the face of the little boy on the page with a finger.

“And then I betrayed you. Twice. No wonder you don’t trust us.”

“I do trust you, Echo.” He licks his lips. She looks at him out of the corner of her eye, only to find his dark eyes intent on her. She has to look away, warmth creeping into her cheeks.

The boy on the page has a mop of brown curls and green eyes, watery with tiredness.

“I was trying to flee the poisonous fog. Found a cave, a long winding tunnel. I lost my way. I don’t know how long I tried to retrace my steps in the dark. Then the reapers came out of the walls.” The boy on the page is dressed in a white shirt and blue jacket. It is easier talking to him about these things, pretending Bellamy isn’t there to judge. “I see them lurking in the shadows, sometimes.”

“For what it’s worth: I don’t think they survived Primefaya.”

“One monster devouring another.”

“Wow, you really went to town with your metaphors there, didn’t you?”

There is mirth twinkling in his eye and just like that the shadow of the mountain retreats and they both chuckle. His arm around her shoulders is not a precious novelty anymore, but expected and welcome.

 

***

 

Echo enjoys listening to Bellamy read. His voice rises and falls in all the right places, heightening the emotion, underscoring the actions, painting such clear pictures, she feels like she can touch it. He doesn’t stutter nor does he need to follow the lines with his finger as she does.

They sit with her back against his chest, his long legs caging her in, their read on her knees and he reads, as slowly as she needs to keep up, while she follows the text with her finger.

It’s been a long time since she graduated from picture and children’s books and now they share a tablet, which has access to an archive that seems infinite. She loves detectives stories and thrillers. He likes historical fiction and biographies, reliving lives through other people's eyes to forget the fact that they are trapped inside a metal tin.

At night, after they've fought their algae down, after watching movies or playing games with the rest, they retreat to their shared room and pick up where they left off. He likes to hear her read out loud, even if she isn't as good as he is, his hands plaiting her hair while she tries to concentrate on the words.

More often than not Echo falls asleep with Bellamy’s voice in her ear. She hasn’t felt safer in her life.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not happy with the ending, but I couldn't figure out how to finish this thing. Hope it's not as jarring as I fear ^^'
> 
> Anyway, this was unbeta'd   
> Thanks for reading and commenting :D


	6. Arena [BECHO]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Octavia throws Gaia, Indra, Bellamy and Echo into the arena after Madi's ascension and her poisoning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Discord Prompt.  
> this is for Erin who wanted some angst and should know better than putting ideas in my head. (Please keep putting ideas in my head, I love it)

When he gets to the arena’s antechamber Indra, Gaia and Echo are already there, waiting. Echo smiles at him but doesn’t move to get closer. Much like Indra, she stands straight and serene, her shoulders squared and her stance firm: two warriors ready to go to war. She shouldn’t have to do this. When they left earth after Praimfaya she left that part of her behind and has been rebuilding herself ever since. He shouldn’t have forced her to inhabit this persona again.

He’s bone tired. “What happens if we don’t fight?”

“It’s been tried,” explains Indra. "You get executed."

“Good. Then she’ll have to do it herself. If she can.”

Echo presses her lips together but doesn't move. Neither does Gaia. “Do you really think that because you are her brother she won’t kill you?”

Echo cocks her head slightly.

“I have to.”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out,” says Gaia, marching out.

“You might be right.” Indra’s voice carries the weight of the world “She might not execute you or me. But Echo?” she swallows, and her voice is terribly vulnerable when she says: "Gaia?"

Someone in the distance calls for them to move and Indra steps forward. “I’ll kill you quickly.” It’s only him and Echo now, and he’s afraid to move, to turn and see her ready to argue for him to fight.

He won’t. He will not play into his sister’s delusional power fantasy.

Echo grabs his hand, there’s something curled in her palm. “Whatever happens, know that I love you, and nothing you do will ever change that.” He squeezes her hand in his.

This cannot be happening.

“Echo. I am not going to fight.”

“Yes. You are. Our people need you, Bellamy.”

“This is wrong.”

“It may be, but Spacekru needs its leader.” She smiles sad and tense and scared, still staring straight ahead. “You can find a warrior to replace me. We cannot find a leader like you.”

“Echo-”

She kisses him: a quick peck, her velvety and pliable lips pressing her promise to his: _Ai hod yo in_

She leaves before he has time to react, slipping from between his fingers, her shoulders squared and back straight, all the way the terrifying warrior that commanded a 10.000 man army.

The darkness of the antechamber closes in on him, coldness seeping into his bones, uncertainty nipping at his heels.

Bellamy knows what he will have to do if he fights. If they somehow manage to defeat – murder- Gaia, and Indra, he knows Echo will not kill him.

He closes his eyes.

Could he do it? He sees himself standing over Echo, his weapon raised and her neck exposed. _Anything for my clan_.

Bellamy fists his hands, there’s something in his right one. When he looks down, he finds Echo’s praying beads in his palm: a necklace of faded wooden pearls, a small metallic pendant in the form of a feather adorning its center. Her most valuable possession, a gift she took from her childhood sweetheart after Nia forced her to kill him.

He clutches the beads.

This is not happening.

 

***

 

Bellamy has never liked med-bays, he dislikes the antiseptic smell and the harsh white lights, the machines he doesn’t understand and the quiet calmness that hangs around its workers. The bunker’s med-bay feels especially creepy with the lines of unused beds and the pale blue curtains desperately trying to add some fake-cheeriness.

A young apprentice patches him up. She has ratty-brown hair and sunken eyes, a tattoo that looks like a claw cupping her jaw. He doesn't think the cut on his arm is severe enough to warrant stitches, but she insisted, and he feels too numb to argue.

When Bellamy closes his eyes all he can see is Gaia screaming. Her spear flying. He sees Echo standing over a fallen Indra, sword raised to deliver a killing blow.

Jackson clears his throat. Promoted to head surgeon after Abby left with Eligius, he looks comfortable in his blood-splattered scrubs.

Spacekru’s leader stands before the apprentice has time to bandage her handiwork.

“Come,” says Jackson, guiding him farther down the med-bay to where they keep the more serious patient.

Bellamy feels like he's wadding through thick muddy water, around him. Everything is muted and distorted, a rock sits on his chest, preventing him from breathing. Maybe Indra did break something when she slammed the butt of her spear into his sternum.

Jackson pushes the ugly curtain to the side, revealing a cot, wires, and machines neatly tucked to the back of the section.

Echo looks small and pale, her arms resting over the raspy gray covers, her eyes closed and jaw slack.

In his ears still rings the noise she made when the spear pierced her shoulder: not a scream of agony but a soft, high-pitched whine.

Bellamy sits on the edge of her bed, mindful not to jostle it – she is such a light sleeper. He studies her royal profile, it’s always a wonder seeing her like resting like this. Bellamy doesn’t usually get a chance to watch her sleep what with her being an insomniac.

How he wishes he didn’t get the chance now.

He brushes his hand against her ice-cold fingers, slipping a wayward strand of auburn hair behind her ear, stroking the proud arch of her cheek, desperately trying to erase the image of her knees buckling under her from the backs of his eyelids.

Her eyes flutter open, and he feels a knot in his chest loosening.

“Hey. You had me really scared there.”

“Your hand is warm,” she hums, a loopy smile appearing on her full lips. “I like your hands.”

Bellamy frowns, follows the IV cord to an inconspicuous looking plastic bag hanging next to her bed.

“How are you feeling?”

“Horny. And sleepy. I had a weird dream that you were scared of horses.”

“I am scared of horses.”

“Horses are the best. You should’ve met Cordovan. He was great.”

Bellamy smiles down at her, fighting the tears prickling his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Echo tries to push herself up but is too weak to manage, and something inside him twists painfully.

“I am just glad you’re ok,” his voice comes out as a broken sob.

“Oh, _älskilng_ ,” when she raises her hand to brush his curls back, the movement is sloppy and clumsy, she nearly pokes his eye. “What’s wrong?”

He presses his head to her chest, mindful with the thick bandages around her left shoulder. “Aw. No, Bell. Don’t cry.”

“I thought I lost you.”

“Good. That would mean that you were still alive. And that’s the most important thing in the universe to me.”

He clutches at her hip for lack of anywhere else to hold her without jostling her too much, big ugly sobs racking his whole body. Her ever-cold fingers burrowed in his hair, her heart beating under his ear.

Bellamy wants to tell her that he doesn’t know how he could’ve ever gone on living without her, that he cannot imagine a life in which she isn’t there at his side. He wants to tell her that, those last agonic minutes before Monty stormed into the arena when he thought she would bleed out were the worst of his life. But most of hall, he wants to hold her for the rest of his life and never, ever let go.

Instead, he rests his head on her chest, pressing himself as close as he dares to her, breathing her in, and thanking the Gods for keeping her safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The trigedasleng page disappeared, so I did what I always do when I want Echo to speak trig and I don't have words: I use Swedish. "Älskling" is the swedish word for "darling" and the reason I went and started learning this beautiful language in the first place. I love that term of endearment. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting


	7. The day the sun stood still [BECHO]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pinned under enemy fire and the harshness of the sun, Bellamy feels his heart shatter in his chest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for Erin, who gave me a wonderful prompt in our discord:  
> "What if Echo hand't defected and she was in that gorge when they get trapped"  
> Hope this is your kind of angst :D  
> The title is from the homonymous song from the Civil War Musical.

Battles are messy. The ground gets slippery with blood, and the noise is so intense you can't really hear anything. The air reeks of fear and adrenaline, gunpowder and led and blood and death. Bellamy shoots and dodges, trying to find cover, keep his people in sight, but mostly: trying to not die. Rational thoughts take a second seat during a battle, your whole existence turning into a straightforward kill o be killed mentality.

Around him, strangers fall like puppets with their strings cut. He doesn't know most of them, the few people he cares about – Miller, Octavia, Echo – he knows where they are. So far he’s managed to keep track of all of them, standing close to his sister means he’s close to Miller, her most loyal follower, so it’s only a matter of keeping Echo in the corner of his eye - she can handle herself.

They are under heavy fire – more a massacre than a battle. Eligius has the higher ground and the cover of the trees and their metal structures, whereas Wonkru is trapped down in the bare gorge. Hiding behind rocks and the mountains of the fallen.

Someone – one of Octavia’s faceless generals – is calling for retreat. The people closest to the entry of the gorge have already thrown their weapons and made a run for it. Others are inching away, shooting up at their attackers.

They need to get out of here. If they stay, they will die.

“O! We need to retreat!”

“No!” he can barely hear her over the gunfire and the screams. “It’s the only way!”

Bellamy grabs her arm, pulling her away, back to where they came.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Echo, wielding a machine gun, standing by the wall, shooting at the nearly invisible enemy.

Her eyes catch him, and he tips his head towards the exit. Retreat. Now.

She nods in acknowledgment and starts to back up from the safety of her semi-secluded position.

“We need to find another way in!” Bellamy shouts at Octavia, trying to make her understand.

He feels more than hears the sonic canon chagrining up. The air hums with its power. There is half a heart beat of expectant silence, long enough for terror to seep into his bones, for his eyes to find Echo, for his hand to tighten around Octavia’s slender arm, but not enough for him to scream a warning.

It feels like running into a metal wall at full speed. Only it’s the wall that slams into him, hard enough to break all the bones in his body.

For a second after the impact, he is weightless, his ears ringing and the world turned on its head. Then he crashes on the floor, and everything goes black.

 

***

 

The ringing in his ears is still there when he comes to. Beside him, Octavia's unconscious, but a quick press of his fingers to her neck reveals that she is – thank all the Gods – still alive.

Bellamy shakes his head. Someone a few feet to his left is pushing himself up to his feet. His eyes bleary, dark blood smeared down the side of his face. He stumbles on uneasy feet but manages to stay upright.

From above comes a single shot.

The stranger’s mouth forms a small “o” as he tumbles back down.

_They are killing the survivors._

His muscles lock into place, panic gnawing at his shoulders.

He needs to get out of here. This is a death trap. He is going to die here-

Beside him, Octavia stirs, and fear takes a back seat in his list of priorities more out of habit than anything else.

“O. Don’t. Move.”

Octavia groans, taking her hand to her ear.

“I said, don’t move. The second we move we’re dead.”

His sister’s eyes blaze as she watches two of her people get executed. Her anger exuding of her in waves of _your fault, your intel was bad, you, you, you!_

But it’s not. And he needs her to listen and be smart about this. He needs her to see reason, that nobody will follow her, that her people need her to admit she was wrong and find a better way or they’ll starve or get executed.

“We give up!” shouts someone. “Please! We give up!”

His heart stops. Maybe the Eligius people will accept it. Maybe these Wonkru deserters will show Octavia that there is a better way, a way in which they don’t all get slaughtered.

Three shots are enough to fell the warriors.

“So much for surrender,” spits Octavia, turning away from him.

Bellamy swallows.

They are dead.

 

****

 

The sun is starting to set when he hears it: a quiet moan, so soft it's not even a whimper. Just the last exhale of someone dying.

Bellamy doesn’t want to turn his head and see who it is. Doesn’t want to find a gaunt teen ending their fight too soon. Doesn’t want to see a fallen warrior, brutally torn from their family. But these are their last moments, and someone should be there for them.

It takes him a moment to recognize the long mud-streaked hair or the sharp profile with the blunt nose and proud cheekbones. Her chocolate eyes are closed, but he has spent too many nights playing with those long slender fingers now curled up like a broken flower, he would recognize them anywhere.

His heart doesn't break as he looks at Echo's fallen body. It shatters, and it is painful, every shard tearing a gash into his lungs, piercing his ribs and poisoning his blood. He must make some sort of sound because Octavia's hand suddenly clamps around his shoulder.

“You are going to get us both killed.”

Octavia’s voice comes from very far away, from a world that's not the one he is in because in the world he's currently inhabiting, he is already dead and has landed in Purgatory.  

Bellamy presses his hand to his mouth to keep himself quiet.

Tearing his eyes off her, though, that's impossible. That image is burned into his brain, into the back of his eyelids. Something wet runs down his face.

 _Echo!_ He wants to scream, to wake her up. She would come up with a better plan than ‘getting executed while trying to surrender.’ She has to, she’s the best strategist he knows.

Maybe she’s still out cold. Maybe the sound he heard wasn’t the fire going out, but a soft groan of someone coming ‘round.

So he stares at her as the sun crawls slowly towards the sunset. Waiting to see a twitch, a sigh. Waiting for her to roll to her side and wink wickedly at him.

Because Echo cannot be dead. She isn’t dead. The world doesn’t make sense if Echo is dead, he needs her.

_Echo, come on._

From where he's uselessly lying, he can't see any wound, but there's blood drying on the corner of her mouth, and things like internal bleeding are a thing.

_Please, please, please, be alive._

Octavia’s talking, but he cannot understand a word she says.

He should have never come here. Echo wouldn't be here if he hadn't followed Octavia into the gorge; if he, Echo, Monty, and Harper had defected from the army; if he hadn't been this stubborn; if he hadn't tried to reason with a madwoman; if he had thought of his people; if he had put Spacekru before his sister.

Octavia is right, Echo’s fallen body is his fault.

Bellamy can’t breathe. His throat doesn’t work, his lungs hang in shreds inside his ribcage.

Six feet away from him, Echo’s prone body stays still.

 

***

 

Twilight casts everything into sharp grays and blues, the world seems surreal in this light. The passage of time is punctuated by lone gunshots and soft thuds of survivors being felled. Those sounds are unreal, too.

Six feet away from him, the fingers on the mud witch, the eyelids flutter.

Bellamy’s shoulders tense, his ragged breath catching, whatever’s left of his heart stopping.

Is it a trick of the light? Could it be? Is she still alive?

He searches her calm profile, the slack mouth and strong line of her nose. Her eyes are open.

 _ECHO!_ , he wants to scream.

Her movements are measured and so slow they seem to take forever.

She turns her head towards him. The last rays of the dying sun glint on the tear running down the side of her nose, on the paleness of her full lips – pressed into a white line.

There's fear in the chocolate depths of her eyes, and he curses Eligius and the sun for pinning him to the ground and the six feet that keep him away from her.

“Echo?” his voice is barely a whisper, but her eyes snap to his lips. “Are you hurt?”

Her lips twitch as she tries to come up with an answer, the apologetic arch of her eyebrows telling answering for her.

It’s the same shape it had last time he hurt her. It’s a shape full of _I didn’t want to inconvenience you with my weakness_.

Only last time they had medical supplies at the ready and Harper was able to splinter her wrist, and a few weeks later she was ok.

Now they’re lying in a ditch, unable to move. Now he loves her and he can’t lose her. Now he might.

“Echo?”

She nods her head, fresh tears running down her cheeks, hanging from the tip of her nose.

“Can you move?”

He sees the twitch of her fingers and nods again.

“Where are you hurt?”

Her lips tremble. The smile does nothing to reassure him. “I’ll be fine,” she whispers.

“Echo” he grits, dragging his arms slowly to pull himself towards her.

Octavia pulls him down by his shoulder.

Echo’s eyes are wide with fear. Her words forming a forceful _stay!_

He glowers at her. “What is wrong?”

She tips her head slightly towards her shoulder. He hadn’t noticed her hand pressed to her chest. Now she raises her blood coated fingers, before pushing them back down.

Her lips shape the words, and he can nearly hear her whisper in his ear.

“I am sorry, Bell.”

 

***

 

It’s not even dark when the first sweeping light beams start to pass overhead. Eligius won’t let their enemy go even in the cover of darkness.

Six feet away from him, Echo’s eyes are glassy. Her movements sluggish.

Damn this sun for not setting already!

 

***

 

It seems to take forever for the darkness to be enough. The sweeping light beam passes over them every thirty seconds. That’s more than enough time.

It glints on Echo’s sharp cheekbones and continues on its circular sweep.

He jumps to his feet, not caring if Octavia is behind him or not.

Bellamy throws himself beside Echo, and her whole body shudders when he pulls her towards him. "Where's the wound?"

Maybe it’s not that bad. Maybe it’s just a flesh wound.

Her jacket is torn and wet. It’s too dark to see if its blood or just mud.

“Ribs,” grits Echo out.

Octavia crashes beside them, pulling his head down a second before the sweeping light beam passes over them.

“You need to leave,” pants the spy. “You need to get out of here.”

“I am not leaving without you.”

They need to stop the bleeding. They need to get her to Jackson or Harper or anyone who knows how to make this better.

“Bellamy, please.”

“NO.”

“Quiet,” growls Octavia.

He tears a strip of Echo’s undershirt and stuffs it into the bullet wound. They’ll deal with infection later, Now they need to move.

He puts an arm under her legs and another behind her back. He takes a deep breath as the beam passes over them.

“Bellamy, _please._ ”

“I am not leaving without you, Echo.”

“Go!” whispers Octavia.

He climbs to his feet, the movement jostling Echo. She grits her teeth clawing at his chest but staying completely silent.

They manage to clear about twenty feet before they have to throw themselves to the ground behind a wall of rocks. At least now they are secluded.

“You will never do it like this,” whispers Echo.

Her brow is beaded in cold sweat, her breath coming in short bursts, and she is right, but there is no other way.

 _“_ Leave.”

“No.” Bellamy brushes her hair out of her face. Her skin is clammy; her eyes wide and terrified. There is no way in hell he is losing her. He can’t. He won’t.

“Our people need you, Bellamy.”

“They need you, too.”

“Damn you, you are our leader.”

“Yes, I am. And I say we leave nobody behind. That includes you.” He presses his head to her brow, trying to make her understand, his life doesn’t make sense if she isn’t in it. “You chose a selfish leader, Echo.”

Her sob shakes her whole body, and it breaks his heart.

“I’ll cover you.”

Octavia’s voice cuts the silence like a knife. It takes him a moment to figure out what she’s saying.

“What?”

Octavia’s holding a gun. “I can draw their fire. Buy you enough time to run away.”

“O.”

It’s a solid plan, and that he is capable of even contemplating it has him choking on bile. His arms tighten around Echo as he searches his sister’s face.

This is a test. She doesn’t mean it. This is one of her twisted ways of showing him how much he’s let her down.

“She doesn’t have much time left.”

Echo’s hand claws weakly at his shirt. Octavia is right, but there must be another way.

His sister’s hand is icy when he touches his cheek, her face softening for the first time since their reunion.

"My brother," she says, and the word breaks him. He thought she had forgotten. He thought she didn't care anymore. "My responsibility."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting.


	8. The Stray [Zaven]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For once this is a tumblr prompt:   
> anon asked for: "a zaven road trip au and/or them in high school thanks"  
> I am unable to write HS Au's so I thought, how hard can a road trip au be?  
> Wel....  
> They are on the road.   
> Maybe not exactly what anon was expecting. Hope you like it anyway.

The monster growls as it shuffles closer. Raven pulls the trigger, but there’s only a clicking sound.

Empty magazine. The creature is too close for her to have time to dig for a new one in her backpack.

So, this is it. This is how her fight ends: alone, on an abandoned interstate, the sun high on a cloudy sky. It seems kind of a waste after everything she’s been through.

Raven backs away, pressing herself against the side of the burned car, her heart pounding in her chest. She doesn’t want to go.

The monster is ugly: rotted teeth on a greenish ulcer-covered face, torn, muddy clothes and a crooked, rusty nametag informing her that this is Steve.

 _After all this, you get killed by a_ Steve?

Well, her life was never the most glamorous.

“Get on with it!”

Steve roars just before his head explodes in a shower of decayed bone and dried brain matter. His left eye lands at her feet, staring up at her with a sort of surprised indignation.

Raven's head snaps up. A guy is pointing an assault rifle at her. "Did it bite you?"

Steve’s body lands on the ground with a disgusting wet splat.

The stranger stands twenty feet away, combat boots splayed on the cracked asphalt, black cargo pants weighted down by the stuff in the bulging pockets, he wears a leather jacket, fingerless gloves and the shadow of a goatee.

“Yo! Did it bite you?”

Raven shakes herself from the shock of seeing another human being after so long with only her entourage of monsters gaining slowly on her. “No!” she calls back.

The stranger lowers the muzzle of his gun but doesn't loosen his grip on it. "What's your name?"

Raven shakes herself.

They don’t pick up strays.

“Thanks for the help.” She opens her backpack and finds a new clip for her gun. The stranger doesn’t move until she’s readjusted the backpack on her shoulders. “Have a nice day.”

She turns to continue her way. About two minutes later she hears the stray start following. And why wouldn't he? With her lame leg she can't run and, well – humans are in limited supply nowadays. Of course, he'll try something creepy. Only the creeps and the murderers are left nowadays.

About two miles down, the stray continues to follow her at a distance.

“Where are you going?”

"To my family," she grits out.

Walking is a bitch on her bad leg. But the next safe house is about two hundred miles east, so she needs to keep her tempo up.

“There are more survivors?”

“Yes.”

“Cool.”

They lapse into silence. He’s slowly becoming bolder, daring to come closer, Raven can feel it on the back of her neck. She touches the gun strapped to her right thigh. Hidden in her brace is a long knife, easy to access and better at disposing of humans than the rifle. Loud noises will attract the monsters and bullets are too precious to waste on strays.

“So. How long have you been on your own?”

Raven grits her teeth.

The guy is walking at her side now. His rifle hanging from his back, hands hooked on the band of a large duffle bag. Looking calm and relaxed and his confidence has her blood boiling.

“You aren’t much of a talker, are you, sweetheart?” His chuckle snaps what little patience she had. In one quick move, she swipes the knife from her brace, and twists his arm, resting the sharp edge of the knife against his throat. “Woah! What the hell is wrong with you!”

“If you think that I am some easy prey for you to play with, I am sorry to disappoint.”

He frowns confused.

“Ok, you are not much for conversation. I get it.”

Raven narrows her eyes. “What are you playing at? Are you friends waiting down the road for an ambush? Do you think I’ll just play nicely and let you do whatever you want with me?”

He stares at her for about five seconds before comprehension dawns on him, his face going from confused to horror in a split second. The widening of his eyes would be comical if Raven weren't so angry.

“You think that I want-? Why would you think something like that?” He sounds indignant.

Raven arches an eyebrow. "Oh. Oh! No. Of course not!" He shudders. Makes no move to pull away from her grip or disarm her. "Look, the truth is: I have been on my own for one and a half years. You are the first human I come across and- Well I think I can understand why you would think that, but I don't mean you any harm. I swear."

He looks honest, and Echo would slap her over the head for it, but she believes him. Raven takes a step back. "Look, I am going to Mount Weather. There's supposed to be a bunker there, where it's safe. Look" Moving extremely slowly, he takes a pamphlet from one of his pockets.

Raven has seen them: yellowed with time and dirty, the ink smudged, the eagle of a government blazon judging them from the sheet’s header.

"So we are actually walking in the same direction. When we reach the river, you can go on to wherever you are going, and I'll turn east." He looks hopeful, like a child at Christmas.

She chews on her bottom lip.

If he is telling the truth, he's been one and a half years without another human being in sight. Raven can't even imagine what that must be like. She has only been on her own for three days, and she feels like she's going insane.

“If you try anything, I’ll slit your throat.”

His smile is beautiful. “Miles Shaw. My friends call me Zeke.”

“I don’t care.”

"Nice to meet you, I don't care. You prefer. Don’t or Care?”

To her mortification, Raven snorts.

“Don’t fall behind.”

They continue down the interstate.

What movies and shows got wrong is that the zombie apocalypse is mostly dull. Trekking alone or in company means long periods in silence.

“So where were you when the world ended?”

The stray apparently didn’t get the memo.

She cast a sardonic look in his direction “Oh, sure, let’s talk about the most traumatic time in our recent memory.”

“I was home with my sister and Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, my mom’s Chihuahua.”

“That’s quite a mouthful for a Chihuahua.”

He chuckles. “Yeah. That’s my mom’s sense of humor for you.”

Raven runs her tongue over her teeth. “Did you know the first zombie you encounter?”

“My mom came into the house through the back door. Only it wasn’t my mom.”

“How did you know?”

“Because we had buried her three days before. My sister was so happy, she threw herself at her before I could do anything to stop her. Mom tore her throat out with her teeth. I grabbed Sir Edward Coley and ran.” He twists his lips self-deprecatingly. “Not my bravest moment.”

"Well, what were you supposed to do?"

Shaw shrugs. The silence hangs heavily over them for another half a mile. "I was home with my friends. It was game night. We think someone bit my boyfriend on his way home because he wasn't looking so hot when he came back. Two hours later, he stumbles out of his room. We thought he was messing around, right until he tore the arms of one of my friends clean off. I had never heard Jasper scream like that. Fortunately, he passed out a second later. His girlfriend wasn't that lucky."

“God.”

“We had to kill him. Echo, my boyfriend’s sister, cut his head off with a kitchen knife.”

“I am sorry.”

“I have never talked about this before. That night was the night our family was born. We’ve been together ever since.”

“Where are they now?”

“They are waiting for me.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Raven sees the pity in Shaw’s eyes, and she hates it. Her family is out there, waiting for her to come back. She knows it.

***

 

They reach the motel by the side of the road two hours after the sun has gone down. It’s a squat two-story building, painted in peeling cream. Raven has been here twice already and knows the safest rooms are 235 and 234 since they are easily defendable, hard to access for the monsters, and invisible from the interstate so you can keep a fire or a light on, and nobody will see.

Shaw follows her right into 235, looking around the room like a curious puppy.

Scavengers have taken practically everything useful, but the thin, uncomfortable mattress on the rusty twin bed, a cracked lawn chair, and one of the nightstands.

Shaw drops his duffel on the ground on the floor, rolling his shoulders with a satisfied sigh.

“I guess you’ll want the bed?”

Raven sets her backpack down, sitting down on the chair. Echo brought it in from the little breakfast room downstairs last time they were here.

“You’ll take first watch?” she asks unstrapping the brace. Her leg feels so much lighter without the metal contraption chafing her skin. Harper used to carry a cream for her, to alleviate the discomfort, but-

Raven shakes her head, pushing thoughts of Harper out of her mind. She needs to stay sharp what with the stray sitting on the crooked bedside table.

“Yeah, ok.”

"I warn you. I am a very light sleeper." She shrugs off her jacket and hops over to the bed. She stuffs her knife under her pillow. "Try anything funny, and you are dead."

“Roger that.”

He finds a Bible in the nightstand, beside a torch and a small box of matches.

Murphy etched _Let there be light_ on the side of the torch.

Raven turns her back on the stray and the torch and the flood of memories of Murphy and Emori marking random passages on the Bible, creating a code they’ve strewn over every motel they’ve been in the last six years. Of the ticking sound of Harper’s knitting needles and Monty’s foraging expeditions and the growl of the rover

She sleeps fitfully without Echo’s snores or Bellamy humming lullabies quietly under his breath and is already awake when Shaw moves change guards.

Raven moves out of the bed and into the chair and watches Shaw toe off his boots and face plant on the squeaky mattress.

He’s snoring within moments, leaving her sad, tired and bored, remembering too much and feeling oh so alone. Raven spends her guard checking and re-checking the contents of her backpack: a toolbox, three more clips for her handgun, a whetstone for her knife, seven packages of dried meat and five protein bars, a bottle of Monty’s last batch of algae – their next stop should be the hidden crops, they should be nearly ready for harvest. Raven pushed thoughts of Monty’s hidden crops –of Monty – out of her mind when she feels her eyes tearing up. She has a clean set of underwear and three threadbare t-shirts. At the bottom of her pack, she finds a radio. It's a small black thing she cobbled together. One for every member of her crew. It doesn't work for long distances, so it's pretty useless. Still, she switches it on, filling the room with static. Shaw doesn't stir. "Hey, guys? Can you hear me?" Static, her only answer. "I am coming, ok?"

Casting a look at the sleeping Shaw, she takes her clothes and hops over to the bathroom. She changes quickly and methodically, feeling marginally better.

The night goes on uneventfully. When she finally wakes Shaw, the stray blinks adorably at her. It takes him about a minute to gather his bearings.

“You can freshen up in the bathroom. The water is still running – more or less.”

“Thanks.”

"I wouldn't drink it, though. Something probably died in the tanks, and it might infect you."

Twenty minutes later they set off down the interstate.

“How come you don’t have a vehicle?” grumbles Raven.

“I had a bike, but we ran out of gas.”

“You couldn’t find anyone to trade?”

“As I said, I haven’t seen anyone in years.”

Raven frowns. Her family has established a good trade route over the years, there are plenty for secluded villages or wandering nomads on the road. “How did you manage that?”

Shaw shrugs, scratches his left arm and says nothing.

“Come on, I thought you wanted to bond or whatever?”

"Let's just say I didn't have the best of luck when I did manage to find people. After a band of sun-worshipers ate my dog, I decided to stay clear of them."

“Wait. They _ate_ your dog?”

“Yes. Tore into him like he was butter. Nearly decapitated me.”

“How did you manage to get out of that?”

“With my bike.”

“And it never occurred to you to transform it into an electric one?”

“I was a pilot, Care, not some tech-wizard.”

Raven huffs. “Why do you know how to transform a bike into an electric one?”

“Yeah. That’s what I did to our rover. We use solar panels to charge it, and it runs smooth like a baby.”

“Not sure if that’s the correct expression.”

“I am a tech-wizard. Not an English mayor, Bellamy.” Raven bites her tongue. The name slipped out of habit. She’s so used to Bellamy giving her crap for mixing up her metaphors and sayings, she didn’t even notice.

Shaw stares at her with a frown. "Let's go. We still have a lot of ground to cover if we want to reach the river."

“So, this family of yours. You come around here a lot?”

“No.”

“I am only saying, you seem to know the way pretty well.”

She chews on her bottom lip. “We have established a trade route over the years. It’s better than scavenging or starving. I know it looks like the world has gone to shit, and it has. But it’s also rebuilding itself.”

God, she sounds like Harper.

“That’s a nice way of seeing it.”

“Harper used to say that.” Shaw perks up.

“Harper?”

"Yeah, she was a ray of sunshine. Always cheery, always seeing the bright side of life." Except when she wasn't and when she couldn't, when she crashed and cried for hours, and nobody could cheer her up. When Harper cried, everyone’s spirits went down, a depression wave dragging them all under until Monty or Bellamy or even Emori managed to break.

“How did she-?”

"Die? She and her husband were shot in the head," Raven swallows. This was last year, but the pain of their loss is still there, fresh like it happened yesterday. "We were trading with a group of settlers south-west from here. They were having problems with their farm and Monty agreed to help. We think there was something in the water that made them paranoid or something because they started saying we were trying to steal their crops. We had to hightail it out of there. Monty was the first to go. Harper was nearly at the rover when they shot her. BAM headshot. And she was gone."

“I am so sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be done.” She clears her throat. “We made it out, haven’t gone back to that place. Murphy wanted to raze it to the ground. But Bellamy talked him down.”

Shaw stays silent for a while. “Your family seems like a force to be reckoned with.”

Raven hums and the stray redirects the conversation to happier, less scarring topics. They talk about their pre-apocalypse hobbies, find out they both shared a favorite book (Lord of the Rings) and a preference for Jäger shots. His favorite game was “hands down Portal, any other choice is invalid.”

“You kidding right? What about Mario Kart?”

The unimpressed arch of Shaw’s left eyebrow has Raven biting the inside of her cheek. “You are kidding, right?”

“Only sore losers dislike Mario Kart.”

They talk about Disney princesses and conspiracy theories about how the epidemic started. When they sit down to eat Raven tells him her name.

In the later hours of the afternoon, they come across a group of rotting monsters, but Shaw is a pretty decent shot, and they dispatch them in no time at all.

They reach the river a few hours later when the sun has nearly disappeared behind the mountains.

They make camp quickly: Shaw picking dry wood to build a fire and Raven clearing space for their sleeping bags and starting said fire. Shaw tells her stories of his childhood in a small Virginia town. He was a choirboy and a boy scout – Raven teases him for an hour after finding these facts out – when he was fifteen he had a punk girlfriend, and they would steal her dad's bike to go to concerts in the city. "A two-hour ride, on the bike we could make it in one," he smiles to himself. "Mom wasn't happy that I hung out with Milly. I enlisted when I was eighteen and when I came back she was gone.”

“Gone were?”

“She wanted to become a famous actress. I don’t know if she ever made it to Hollywood.”

They lapse into silence. Raven stares at his hands across the fire. They’re broad and robust, with short square nails, his black leather fingerless gloves are scuffed and patched on the sides.

 _We don’t pick up strays_ , mumbles a voice in the back of her head.

She turns her head to look at the black outline of Mount Weather against the dark blue canvas that is the sky. It’s a two-day trek to the bunker. Two days through treacherous terrain full of scavengers, monsters and crazy people.

 _You are not responsible for the stray_ , grumbles the voice in the back of her head. _He’s going there out of free will. If he doesn’t leave, he’ll follow you all the way to the safe-house._

Raven licks her lips. Illuminated by the low fire, Shaw has a beautiful profile. Kind features, child-like eyes, a mouth made to be kissed.

 _Stop it_.

“You take first watch,” she grumbles crawling into her sleeping bag and turning her back on him.

Tomorrow he'll be gone, and she'll be on her own, on her way home to her family. She doesn't have time to develop a crush on this guy. She doesn't need a crush. She needs to get home.

 

***

 

Raven sleeps fitfully, plagued by memories of the Mountain, of the scary monsters inside – worse than the zombies – and the pain and Bellamy’s twisted face as he cut through their enemies and the warmth of the fire, the stench of blood and burned flesh and the firmness of Murphy’s shoulder under her arm. Harper’s hollow eyes, Echo’s silence.

When she wakes, she’s as tired as she was the night before.

They eat their last breakfast together in silence. Shaw’s soft brown eyes keep wandering over to her, a confused frown etched on his brow.

Dismantling camp always takes a lot less time than setting it up, they climb back on the road when the sun starts peeking over the mountains.

“So,” Shaw wipes his hands on his dirty pants. “I guess this is goodbye.”

Raven smiles, her back firmly towards Mount Weather. She should wish him farewell and continue. There’s still a lot of ground to cover and-

“There’s nothing there.”

“What?”

“The mountain? The bunker doesn’t exist.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t exist? The pamphlet-“

“Oh, the pamphlet was right. There was a US Military facility there. There were even survivors. But they are gone now.”

“How?”

"It went boom." Raven can't look him in the eye. She isn't ashamed of erasing the mountain. She doesn't care that a bunch of scientist and crazy officials burned to death – and she can’t think about the civilians who inevitably got caught in the crossfire.

Shaw stumbles back, leaning on the concrete railing of the bridge. “Where- How- How did it explode?”

“It had a pretty big stock of missiles. They exploded.”

_I made them explode._

“How?”

“A lot of people went crazy with the end of the world, Shaw.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “How do you know?”

 _I was there. I watched it happen. I_ made _it happen._

Anger and fear still coil in her belly with the thought of that place “I just do.”

He sighs. “Ok. Then-“ he squares his shoulders “Then I’ll have to find someplace else to go.” Raven licks her lips.

"You can walk with me if you want."

His smile is worth the nagging feeling that she’s being an idiot. They continue east. Talking as easily as yesterday. Every now and then his arm brushes her shoulder, and she gets distracted with the soft curve of his lips and the firm line of his nose.

Maybe it’s the quiet, concise way he shapes his words or the heavy set of his shoulders – God knows she _has_ a type – or the way the corner of his eye crinkles with his smile.

They eat in a small orchard off the side of the road. His rations consist of two grainy granola bars and some strips of dried meat. Raven swallows a cup of the disgusting algae thing Monty prepared to supplement all the vitamins their current diet was missing and washes it down with a strip of dried meat and half a granola bar.

When they’re done, Shaw considers her for a long moment before digging into a side pocket of his duffle and pulling out a sparkly package. Raven never thought she would hear the familiar rustling ever again.

“Oh, my god.”

“We can share if you’d like?”

“That must be the last Twix in existence.”

He chuckles.

“Apparently you and your family haven’t raided enough supermarkets. I am sure there still more waiting to b found.” He takes one of the bars and offers it to her.

The chocolate is slippery between her dirty fingers, and the caramel inside is slightly chewier than usual, but the flavor is the same and Raven finds herself grinning with tears in her eyes.

“You ok?”

“Sinclair used to get me these as a treat whenever I aced an exam.” She swallows the lump in her throat. “He was my guardian.”

They chew in silence until their treat is gone. “I am going to kiss you now,” announces Raven like it’s a challenge.

“I am perfectly ok with that,” he answers with the same tone.

Shaw’s kiss tastes like and a stale granola bar and caramel, like pine trees and lazy afternoons laying on the couch. His hands, two heavy anchors, land on the back of her head, keeping her firmly in place, and on the swell of her hip – a warm promise to the future. Her body surges forward, clawing at his crew cut and shoulders.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”

Raven jumps to her feet, her hand swiping the gun from the holster at her thigh in one quick movement.

They are surrounded: a group of ten heavily armed, men and women in camouflage clothes and military gear creep closer, stepping out of the shadow of the trees. She turns to throw a poisonous look at her sisters - It’s Echo and Emori’s job to secure the perimeter – only to remember they aren’t here. She should’ve made the perimeter check herself.

The ringleader is a man with an unfortunate haircut and a cross tattooed to the side of his skull. He slithers closer, cocking his head to the side like a curious bird. His small cold eyes study the scene in front of him with calculated disinterest.

Beside her, Shaw tenses. “McCreary.”

Raven swallows.

McCreary and his people are infamous for terrorizing small colonies, demanding taxes, pillaging and killing without remorse or anyone to stop them. But their turf is miles from here until now they have never been this far north. “If it isn’t our pilot.” The man weaves between Shaw and Raven, circling her like a bird of prey. “And his little _friend_.”

The gang laughs, shifting nearer, closing in on them.

“Look, McCreary-“

The man slams the, but of his large gun into Shaw's skull, the man crumbling like a stringless puppet, and in the same movement ends up resting the large muzzle on Raven's temple. He extends his free arm for her handgun, one thin eyebrow arched in defiance. _Dare to resist_ , says that eyebrow.

Raven’s fingers tighten around the warm hilt of her weapon, Roan’s name engraved on the slide winking at her. Carefully she slides the safety back on and hands it over.

“I warned you, Shaw” he kicks him for good measure. “I wouldn’t accept traitors in my crew.”

“I never joined your crew. I joined Diyoza’s.”

Raven takes a careful step back hoping McCreary’ll be distracted with Shaw, but the man’s small cold eyes roll to her, pinning her down like a bug. “Now where do you think you are going?”

“Whatever your beef is with Shaw-“

“Oh, I will settle my _beef_ with him.” His honeyed voice makes Raven’s hair stand on end. Over the years since the world has ended, she and her people have encountered many monsters. Back when she was little, she thought the scariest where those that scream and laugh maniacally. Over time she has learned that it’s the soft-spoken ones that are really dangerous. “But you still need to be of use to me.”

“I only want to go back to my family.”

This is the first time she’s had to confront one of them knowing her family isn’t coming for her. And she hates the fear nagging at her bones, the fact that her eyes keep going back to her stray and that she really doesn’t want to leave him behind even though it might be the _survivor’s move._

"Don't we all?" The man chuckles and lowers his weapon. "But, you see. If you are not useful." He cocks his weapon, the metal clicking loudly in the quiet clearing. "Then there's no reason for you to continue being alive."

Raven’s heart stops as McCreary aims his gun once more at her head. McCreary’s icy eyes are remorseless as he stares at her and she knows, this man will kill her without blinking an eye.

“McCreary-“ pants Shaw, pushing himself upright. “Listen to me.”

“So, what will it be? What use do you have?”

Raven looks around at the ragtag band, her brain churning.

She is not stupid, half of her talents could be useful for this guy. But she has heard the stories of terrified communities that fled his territory. She has been under the thumb of mighty people that wanted nothing but her work, her blood, her bones, her mind-

Does she want to help these people? If they're this far up north, that means they're entering her family's territory, they're a threat, and with her help, they could be the threat that finally destroys them. Could she ever live with herself then?

“She can make your cars run on electricity!” there’s an edge of hysteria in Shaw’s voice.

McCreary narrows his eyes.

“How?”

“She can make them powered by solar energy.”

“Is that so? Your friend doesn’t look too convinced, Shaw.”

“I know she can.”

“I can’t, I was bluffing.”

McCreary’s smile uncoils like a snake. “I don’t think you were. Congratulations, pet. You get to live another day. Take her home, boys.” He checks her out from head to toe. “and take that brace off, we don't want our new friend to run off now, would we?"

“No!”

Raven lashes out with a shriek when she feels one of the crony's hands on her shoulder. Her elbow connects with a firm chest, and she turns to find a wall of unmovable muscle. She balls her fists and throws two quick punches like Roan taught her all those years ago. The man seems unfazed, throwing his arms around her, pinning hers to her sides, and raising her off her feet. Raven screams. A second man comes up behind her, his sweaty hands grabbing her thigh to pull the brace lose.

Raven kicks with her good leg as hard as she can, and the hands disappear. She tries wiggling out of the giant's grasp, but he only tightens his bear hug until her ribs crack. Someone gets a hold of her ankle, pulling on it until she can't kick again, and the hands are back on her thigh, the bands of her brace snap open, and the contraption falls.

Her heart flutters in the back of her throat like it's trying to break free. She can't breathe, doesn't dare to move. The fingers digging into her ankle bead her forehead with cold sweat. The knowledge that she's entirely at their mercy fills her with dread.

“Well,” drawls McCreary, now that that’s been dealt with. Let’s go.”

“What about Shaw?” asks someone in the crowd.

The loud clack of a gun being cocked is answer enough. “He has outlived his usefulness.”

Raven shudders in the goon’s arms, mind racing. “Wait!”

Something brushes the top of her head and the man holding her stumbles backward, arms slacking as he tumbles to the ground, Raven on top of him.

There’s an arrow sticking out of his right eye.

Someone shouts the fallen man’s name, McCreary’s crew turn around, aiming their guns at the trees.

“Do I have your attention now?”

Five feet away from her stands a man in his early thirties, dark curls pushed back and slanted eyes fierce on McCreary, a crossbow resting comfortably on his shoulder. He is a short, stocky man in a worn leather jacket and combat boots, facing the group of murdering enemies with the patience of a disappointed dad and Raven's so relieved by his presence, she could weep.

“And who might you be?”

“My name is Bellamy Blake. You seem to have found a member of my crew. I’d like her back now.”

Raven scrambles for her discarded brace.

“You just killed one of my men?” McCreary’s hand fists in her ponytail, pressing his gun once more to her temple. “I think we should even the score.

“This is your last warning. Let her go.”

"You are outmanned, outgunned. And your little friend is needed elsewhere now."

“My crew is twice as big as yours, they’re surrounding your people as we speak, and will descend on you like we did on Mount Weather, and in Polis, and in district 10 of Washington DC.”

“I call your bluff, Blake.”

He arches an eyebrow. Tips his head to the side. “We don’t want anyone else to get hurt.

Raven’s scrambling hands close around the handle of the knife hidden in her brace, she looks up at Bellamy, his nod is nearly imperceptible.

“And can your friends shoot before I pull the trigger?”

“Yes.”

It’s a gamble that has Raven’s heart stuttering.

McCreary purrs. “It’s a pity, little thing. But it seems that’s your time to die.” There is no shot, no loud bang, only a breath of air and then McCreary’s scream as an arrow pierces his wrist and his suddenly numb fingers drop the gun. Raven slams the brace into his head, unsheathing her knife and throwing herself on the tumbling man in the same motion.

She stabs the man in the eye, the long blade sinking into his head all the way into his brain. With a roar, she twists the knife before pulling it out.

“Anyone else?” barks Bellamy, bringing her attention back to the clearing. Two more people are dead, arrows sticking from them like flags. The remaining men shift back, inching away, scanning the woods worriedly. “Leave. Don’t come back here.”

The band rushes out of the scene, and Bellamy relaxes his shoulders and crosses the distance to help her up. "Are you ok?"

Raven throws her arms around his neck, feeling shaky, a wave of relief washing over her. “You are here, you’re really here.”

Bellamy’s hands are warm and reassuring when they come around her back. “You’re safe, Raven. Your family’s here.”

“What’s with the human punch bag?” asks Murphy, deciding she’s had enough peace and quiet for the moment. Raven has never been so glad to hear his voice. She turns to see him peering curiously at Shaw. Emori and Jordan are coming closer. A moment later a very pregnant Echo steps out of the tree line.

They’re here. They’re all here!

Shaw climbs slowly to his feet.

“Raven”

“The human punch bag is with me.”

“You adopted a stray?” Emori scrunches her nose, and Bellamy rubs Raven's arm.

“You sure?”

Raven studies the man’s soft face. This might be a mistake, they haven’t known each other for long, and he’ll need to explain his connection to McCreary’s crew. And things might not work out. He might die next week, or decide he isn’t cut for life in a crew – he has been alone for years.

But there is hope in those kind dark eyes, a promise in his full lips and determination in the set firm of his jaw.

“If he wants to stay.”

Shaw smiles, as much as his split lip allows, and Raven feels her heart fluttering against her chest. Surrounded by her friends, her family, this feels like the beginning of something thrilling and new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is unbeta'd and might suffer some edits in the future.   
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting. If you want to leave me some prompts, I'll love to answer them. You can contact me on @ghelikblack in tumblr!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting. If you want to send me a promp. feel free to do so on tumbler @ghelikblack. :D


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